Libraries using Flickrby Meredith Farkas

Over the next week, I need to write my column for September’s American Libraries magazine. I’ve already decided that I want to write something about libraries and Flickr, but I’m not sure which library (or perhaps 2 libraries) to focus on. I have a few ideas, but I thought I’d put it out to my readers to see if you know of any examples of a library using Flickr that you think are particularly cool. There are so many libraries now using Flickr, and I’m pretty sure there must be great examples out there that I know nothing about. If you know of one, just link to their photos in the comments on this post.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas is a faculty librarian at Portland Community College in Oregon and an adjunct faculty member at San Jose State University's SLIS program. She is the author of the book “Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication and Community Online” (Information Today, 2007) and writes the monthly column “Technology in Practice” for American Libraries. Meredith was honored in 2014 with the ACRL Instruction Section Innovation Award, in 2008 and 2011 with the WISE Excellence in Online Education Award and in 2009 with the LITA/Library Hi Tech award for Outstanding Communication in Library and Information Technology. She has been writing the blog Information Wants to be Free since 2004.

19 Comments

I’ve more of a no-brainer example rather than anything cool or revolutionary. I’m using a blog / Flickr to communicate major renovation changes we’re undertaking. We’ve shut down 30,000 sq ft to create more user-focused library space and I needed a way to show our users what is going on behind the construction walls and that progress is actually being made! The blog/Flickr combo just made sense in my example.

Well, our library has moved the periodicals section to another part of the building to make room for a Starbucks. If that counts, check out the ongoing construction at our Flickr page at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bsulibrary/

I use Flickr at our library to promote our collections and use the Flickr notes to link directly into our catalog: http://www.flickr.com/photos/csbsjulibrary/. Our collections are promoted through the This Day in History series and two of our popular reads shelves are displayed every 3 or so weeks. Some of the photos are viewed hundreds of time, and I have received so many emails from people telling me that they love this.

when I was still working at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam we used Flickr to let the customers know we were having a huge renovating. From the first pictures for promotion untill the re-opening, you all find them here – http://www.flickr.com/photos/51274412@N00/.
Okay it’s a Dutch Library, but I really liked the idea!

We use flickr to promote displays and for our annual art contest http://www.flickr.com/photos/dclibrary/. You may also want to check out the flickr group 365lib – by joining this group you are committing your library to uploading 365 photos within a year’s time.

We’re using Flickr at Z Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University: http://flickr.com/photos/zsrlibrary/ It’s a pretty standard use, but we’re using it a lot. We range from pictures of events within the library to our Read posters to art exhibits. We also have “private” sets for photos of internal activities (like our campus olympics team) so that staff members can see them, but they aren’t out in the public. FWIW!

Pierce County’s Flickr page started to feed images into our blogs but we’ve been consistently adding a pic a day for the 365 project Michael Porter suggested a while back. I’m trying to vary the images (people and things, ordinary and out-of-the-ordinary) so it shows the art of library life rather than sinking into endless bookshelves. A local newspaper even picked up on our first 30 day effort and we hope for more community publicity as time goes on.

Now that ALA is over, we’ve also got our eyes on a few other Flickr-related library projects to reinforce with the public all the other things we already do.

Interesting uses of flickr – most of the above flickr collections appear to be created /contributed by the library. Are there libraries out there that are encouraging their patrons to upload their own items as well? Patrons could be asked to tag their images with a certain phrase to be sure their images are returned in the relevant results.

At the National Library of Australia Flickr is used as a way of linking with the AUstralian community to collect pictures for the resource dsicovery service PictureAustralia – see http://www.pictureaustralia.org/index.html. It has been very intersting to see the thematic content collected and, perhaps more importantly, the enw engagement with communities. Pictures from Flick have also been acquired for the Library’s collection. It enables a social networking focused on images of Australia and the ability for the LIbrary to itneract with a community that may never walk into a library or think of going to a library website.